Monkeys Messed Up My HP Scanjet, Big Time

Hardware Problems

On the underside of the ADF (Automatic Document Feeder) is a dual metal bar that is supposed to force the paper down on to a bed as it exits the mechanism. At the end of a page scan, the paper is retained in the mechanism until a decision is made as to whether it is to be subjected to double-sided scanning or not. If not, the page is fed forward and this dual bar is supposed to force the page away from the ledge on the exit mechanism onto the bed below.

Unfortunately with thin (and normally smaller) paper, this does not happen. The paper remains on the ledge until the next sheet nudges it off. This process sometimes results in the first sheet being forced up and catching on the cantilevered ADF feeder tray above the bed, causing the subsequent sheets to bunch up, causing a horrific paper jam if you don’t monitor the process continuously.

On the last page of a scan, if the last sheet doesn’t fall from the ledge, the last sheet can be partially drawn back into the mechanism. The scanner does not detect the paper presence as an error condition, and failure to notice (it is hidden away beneath the paper feeder superstructure) results in an even bigger paper jam. See later for details of extraction of paper.

A paper feed jam can be caused by the point above, or as a result of pages sticking together causing a misfeed. Hitting the “cancel” button on the screen takes the system many, many seconds (30 or more) to react, which allows the paper jam to get much worse. An “emergency cancel” that would stop the scan instantaneously would certainly have been appreciated.

When a paper jam has occurred, the only way to get the paper out is to disconnect the power, release the ADF feeder rollers, and ease the paper out. Sometimes you have to remove the ADF scanning window. With flimsy paper, especially when overdriven as described above, it is frequently impossible to get the paper out in one piece because it is not possible to relieve the pressure on the rollers.

When you disassemble all that is accessible, there is still a small area in the rollers that it is impossible to access, even with tweezers. When paper does get stuck in this way, it is difficult in the extreme to extract it. There is no way to activate the rollers directly to try to drive it out. The only way is to run another piece of paper through until it jams -- in the hope that it dislodges the small piece. It takes several attempts and a lot of time and effort to clear this, especially since it has to be attempted as a normal scan with all the associated startup delays. I believe it is possible to remove the rollers, since you can buy a replacement roller kit, but there are no instructions as to how to do this.

Abrasion of the ADF scanning window (a transparent plastic sheet 8 inch x 3 inch plus mounting plastic) occurs very quickly resulting in a shadow on all scans. I am not sure if this happens more quickly because of the scanning of harsher paper like newsprint. It costs $18.35 (without shipping) to replace it each time, which becomes exorbitant given the number of times it would have to be done to maintain a clear image.

The cleaning cloth for the ADF supplied with the scanner, (also with the replacement separator bar, and as a specific purchase item) is too thick to be fed through the rollers under any circumstance, despite the instructions in the user manual and on the packaging (which incidentally do not agree).

This entry was submitted by Aubrey Kagan and edited by Rob Spiegel

Tell us your experiences with Monkey-designed products. Send examples to Rob Spiegel for Made by Monkeys.

You're a very patient person, Rob. I would've thrown in the towel and attempted to glue the spines back on those old data books. I would respectfully suggest that most any scanner could be a subject for a "Monkeys" column. I don't think I've ever used a scanner that did not have some idiosyncrasy where, when you totalled up value of the amount of time spent messing around with the scanner, you could have gone out and spent less to have a third party convert the source material to electronic format. What it boils down to is scanners are really only worth it for converting old family photos, where the sentimental value = priceless.

I agree. I understand the need/desire to put books in electronic format. But I couldn't help but chuckle at the irony here: The author spends copius amounts of time not only scanning 300K pages, but also dealing with the gremlins and shortfalls of "electronic" devices. Then posts a detailed depiction on DesignNews about his "electronic" device woes, but cuts the splines off his books and puts them in an "electronic" format anyway. I hope for his sake his "electronic" storage media is more robust.....otherwise we might see a follow-up story. Using a scanner for this kind of volume is like Lance Armstrong trying to win a race with a tricycle.

Apparently HP pays the Monkeys well. So well in fact they are exceptionally enthusiastic. It would also seem they have been at work there long enough to be not only diligent but thorough, creative and they exhibit considerable skill and experience.

I am continually amazed to find problems cropping up in machines that have worked very well in the past but for some reason someone altered the design. The new change most likely was an attempt to make the part less costly but it seems testing is frequently given short shrift.

My personal exposure to this was with a 1995 Suburban. I really liked that car a lot. I figured the chevy 350 engine was a tried and true design and would be either cheap to fix or more likely not subject to breakdowns. Well the engine was fine, but the transmission gave up after 80K miles. The rebuild was expensive at about $2K and the shop told me there were 20 pages of changes, bulletins and mods required to overhaul the transmission.

I really am surprised when a company takes a design that is working really well over millions of production units and tinkers with it and effectively destroys the fine reputation they had built up over that many years. At the very least, proven designs should not be altered without extensive testing and verification that the new design is really better. And by better I do not mean cheaper. It is false economy to depend soley on cost of manufacture to evaluate a design and not take into account the potential to negatively impact the reputation of a company or product.

I never heard the final word on what happened to Toyota's famous quality control but that is another case in point.

A great point, ivank2139. Design for disassembly as well as design for repairability are as important as solid reliability. As for the ECNs and mods on the transmission, that's in some sense part of the price for a long-lived design. Seems like there should be a way to revision the manual so the techs don't have to pick through all that material -- which adds more opportunity for errors -- for a rebuild.

One of the great failures of U.S. industry is how often the redesign team is not more integrated with the original design team. I sometimes doubt if the redesign or cost out team ever consults the original design team, test plan, quality verification plan, service or any other connection to the original design. I think quite often the redesign is also done by less experienced engineers that are shortly out of college looking for and working at their first job. It's sad because we get used to and accept the fact that a 350 chevy is going to be as good as the one that we all knew and loved. And, little known to us, it along with so many of our other beloved staples of reliatbilty have been cost reduced to a point of diminishing quality

My solution to the problems with an HP printer was to scrap the device and purchase a Cannon brand 4-in-1 package. Not only does it perform flawlesly, but the ink is much cheaper and available at a discount seller.

I do still have an HP1320 laser printer to print PC board artwork on "magazine paper", which then the page is ironed onto a blank board and the resulting pattern can be etched. Unfortunately I can't get the driver for this printer to install now with Windows XP. I don't know if the problem is monkeys or demons.

Seems like I have a whole cellar full of gadgets that won't work with Vista or Windows 7. But I found that usually the driver installation in Linux consists of 1) Plugging in the device........use it! Last night I scanned 200 pages using Xscan and our "old" scanner (using my new laptop and Ubuntu 11.04, in the cellar, where it's cool). The HP Windows driver (for XP) was a real PIA to use. Our new HP printer/scanner is not much better. Don't these people ever test them for useability?

HP HAD...I repeat HAD good printer, plotter and scanner products that worked well and did the job under PREVIOUS versions of M$ software and O/Ses. I know, my collection of older hardware still works well from NT 3 to NT 5 ( AKA Ww2000 ) operating systems.

Then M$ literally put a gun to every manufacturers head and demanded that the driver suite that was BACKWARDS COMPATIBLE ( mostly in XP too ) would be rebuilt and the original APIs would be severed. This issue was because of the DRM demands of Gates, the RIAA and MPAA...

These demands even came at the CHIP LEVEL...Which also broke the chips too.

Google " tilt bits " if you want the gory hardware details...

So suddenly a bunch of good hardware was rendered obsolete...

Which is why I still have ( and use ) my old ( LEGAL ) copies of AutoCad....

And earlier system that run 98se, W2000 and XP have the same vintage software and games....

If you really want screaming performance, try putting that old stuff on a new machine.....

And if you really want to dump the new/old compatibility issue, go to LINUX ( old stuff still runs on new hardware/OS ) and set up VMs with your old M$ O/S...You DO have the COA and docs, right?

I will not go into why I would not cut the splines on my originals, or attempt scanning 300,000 documents on a flatbed scanner...

1. For this size project, look to what college kids created for scanning their textbooks with. It's a two camera textbook copier that interfaces with open source software. Even Google invited him to give a talk to their project team that copies old books (Google books?). This would be a faster solution without tearing aprt your originals.

2. To be able to use your 'old' scanner on your newer OS (cross platform like Mac, Win 7, and Linux), I was recommended Vuescan. http://www.hamrick.com/ This was written by a guy who understood how a flatbed scanner is communicated with, and he has written a universal software package to interface most scanners. I have used it for 4 different scanners, all in one, etc. It's $29, but I opted for the $79 price tag so I can update it forever. One software package on any platform for most scanners (see his list). I use it at work on my 10+ year old HP scanjet 6200C on Win7.

I'll be honest- I never considered any other approach. However looking at the camera approach I am not sure I would have used it although the challenge of making the equipment is enticing.

Preserving the books was not of interest since I was going to turf them anyway.

Secondly the system that they propose requires each page to be hand turned. This means you have to be present for each scan. In my case I would start the scanner and walk away able to come back 20 minutes later to initiate the next scan. As an added benefit, I did get a lot of exercise going up and down the stairs to the basement.

Thirdly looking at the photos, it seems to me that the equipment would have had problems with really fat data books ~2000 pages.

Thanks for the Vuescan link. I will give it a shot although I really don't do much ny scanning now.

From what I know, the diyscanner is designed to accomodate various size books since it has a mechanism to lower the book down from the clear glass or plexiglass. I think they are constantly updating the design since a lot of people are collaberating on it. Seems like it might have a quick mechanism to lower the book, turn the page and lift it back up to the glass. It might even push the button to take teh picture allowing for it to be quickly done. I heard that a xxx page book took yyy minutes, and I thought it was alot faster than I expected.

As far as Vuescan, I like it because now I own one software solution for almost any scanner or operating system. Not dependant on HP to make sure softwre works on newest Windows only operating system,etc.

Most of the time, the printers are good products like on InkJetSuperStore.com hp inks that deliver quality prints, no doubt about that, but what brings the impression and experience way down is faulty and buggy printer drivers and hp deskjet printer that would make Dalai Lama go insane.

I have Windows 7 and a HP Photsmart Premium Priner that are filled with monkey designs.

When i got the unit, there were constant problems. It would not print a document with multilple pages in consecutive order. Since I like to print on both sides, this made it impossible to put the pages in order. If I wanted to put page numbers on each page, it would number every other page. It would not print addresses on envelopes. To solve the problem HP told me to download a special printer driver. and use it for such things as printing envelopes.

For some reason the printer decided to act like a printer and worked fine for about a year. Several days ago, it decided not to print envelopes, instead oit operates the photo printing slide and prints addresses on photo paper. After lots of tries, tried the special driveragain and that prints envelopes. However since i cannot change drivers after printing out a letter, I cannot print envelpes without going back to the beginning and selecting the special driver. A real time saver.

I am not sure whether the problem is an HP problem or Micorsoft problem. I mistakenly put Windows 7 on the computer and as a result access to the internet is always a problem, in addition to many others. Sometimes the internet willl not start when the computer is turned on. Sometimes the internet connection will be lost when in use. To date I have always been able to recover the internet by restarting the computer. Another time saver.

I have had computers and printers for many years. The total number of problems in all the previous years do not come close to the problems with Windows 7, Office 2007 and my HP Printer.

Incidentally, both are not out of warranty, so I am expected to pay for service now. I prefer to keep the problems as a reminder of how to ruin good products.

My recommendataion is to keep Windows XP, use Open Office and keep your old HP printer.

Focus on Fundamentals consists of 45-minute on-line classes that cover a host of technologies. You learn without leaving the comfort of your desk. All classes are taught by subject-matter experts and all are archived. So if you can't attend live, attend at your convenience.